


A Brother's Blood

by osprey_archer



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 09:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>His father squeezed Cunorix’s hand. There was little strength in his withered fingers, but his broken nails dug into Cunorix’s palm. “Sometimes, my son,” he said, “to be fond of the Romans at all, is to be too fond.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brother's Blood

His father had warned Cunorix. After Cunorix took Alexios to hunt for his wolf, his father had said, “You are too fond of him.”

“Am I?” Cunorix replied. “Surely you must mean, he is too fond of _me_.” 

Alexios’s admiration bemused Cunorix. Chieftain’s son Cunorix might be, but he knew he was not half as beautiful as Connla, and lovers did not flock to him. It did not bother him: he had his Shula, and what more could he need?

So he did not know what Alexios saw in him. But, after all, Alexios did not push to be allowed anything more than to admire, and there was no harm in that. Indeed, it could mean good things for the Votadini for their next chief to be in Roman favor. 

Besides, there was something charming in that unlooked-for adoration. So perhaps Ferradach Dhu was not all wrong to worry Cunorix was too fond of Alexios: Cunorix would have been a hard man not to like a little someone who liked him so much. 

“He is very young,” Cunorix said, taking his father’s stiff hand. “It is only a puppy love.” 

His father squeezed Cunorix’s hand. There was little strength in his withered fingers, but his broken nails dug into Cunorix’s palm. “Sometimes, my son,” he said, “to be fond of the Romans at all, is to be too fond.” 

***

And, on the night that Alexios killed Cunorix’s brother Connla, Cunorix knew that what his father said was true. 

Later, when there was time for thinking - and in the long hard marches of a war trail, there is time and too much time for thinking - Cunorix knew that Alexios had killed Connla out of mercy. The Romans would have killed Connla in some horrible way all their own, because they had no humor for horse-stealing, and Alexios had given him a swift, clean death. 

Later, when his first rage and grief had become just a burning cold stone in his stomach, Cunorix knew that. 

But when first he heard that the Roman commander Alexios - Alexios whom he had helped win his wolf; Alexios whom he had called _friend_ \- when Cunorix first heard that this _friend_ had killed Connla, as Connla stood tied to a post, when Connla had done nothing but try to steal a horse, as all young men did and as the Romans were too stupid to understand - 

When Cunorix first heard it, he did not hear anything else for long moments, because he was deaf to anything but the rage roaring in his ears. 

_Friend_. For this Alexios he had thought that the Votadini might stand against the Attacotti and the Caledoni, at the Roman’s side! Friend indeed, to murder Cunorix’s brother! A red mist hung before Cunorix’s eyes, and he tasted blood in the back of his throat: and if he had seen Alexios, in that moment Cunorix would have strangled him with his bare hands. 

A branch in the fire popped. The noise brought Cunorix back to his hall, and he saw that in the moments his rage had blinded him to all the world, his warriors had begun to gather around the fire. They too had loved Connla. They would chase the Romans to the ends of the world to avenge him; there was no need to kill Alexios with his own bare hands. 

Cunorix picked up a branch and cast it into the fire, so a shower of sparks billowed toward the ceilings. Their faces all flashed red in the firelight. “Bring a goat,” he said, and though his voice was quiet, it was so taut with wrath that it filled the hall. “Bring a goat, and a hazel branch to dip in its blood: for we must summon a war-hosting. Who will carry the Cran-tara?” 

“The Cran-tara,” someone whispered; and then “I will go! I will go!” they shouted, and they raised their voices and stomped their feet until the hall echoed with their noise, all of them clambering to carry the Cran-tara to honor Connla and avenge him against Rome. And then, then Cunorix’s tears came, with grief, with gratitude for the love that they bore his brother. 

Gratitude, perhaps, that they grieved Connla as purely as he ought to be grieved: for Cunorix’s grief was not untinctured by relief. 

Relief - because Connla’s death answered a question that had preyed on Cunorix’s mind for weeks. Should he ally with the Attacotti and the Caledoni - or stand by the old alliance with Rome? 

Connla’s death made it simple. The Six Hundred Spears would join the war host: would drive the Romans from their fort: would cut them down in the fields until blood fountained from the earth. Cunorix would kill Alexios himself. The Six Hundred Spears would chase them to the world’s end. 

Even in death, it seemed, Connla would lead them to rashness. 

Beneath the clamor of his warriors, Cunorix could hear awakened babies crying, high and thin. 

And that was Cunorix’s second relief, the one that stabbed at him, hot and bright as a poker. Relief: because no matter how Cunorix fared, he need no longer fear that his brother Connla, his rash, reckless, foolhardy little brother, would ever lead the Six Hundred Spears. 

And so he cried: not grieving Connla so much as the fact that he did not grieve Connla more: weeping, because his rage was not only at his brother’s death, but that his death came about by Alexios’s betrayal. 

Cunorix lifted his hands, and the clamor at once was silent, and in that silence he said, “The fastest runner will take the Cran-tara. We will join with the Attacotti and the Caledoni; we will attack their fort, we will drive them from our land at first light. Be ready.”


End file.
